Category: News

Webinar Medae: How can agroecology be a lever for women’s emancipation in North Africa ?

The MEDAE network is pleased to invite you to participate in the webinar ” How can agroecology be a lever for women’s emancipation in North Africa ? “ which will take place on Tuesday April 22, 2025 (14:00 -16:00 CET).

Summary :

This webinar will look at the place of women in food systems in North Africa, and how agroecology is helping to empower them. Presentations by researchers and farmers from Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco will provide a better understanding of how agroecology can empower rural women, enabling them to access new economic opportunities and participate in collective territorial dynamics. Several question and answer sessions will be held to enable participants to react to the presentations and share their own experience and vision of more inclusive rural development.

The webinar will be held in French, with English translation provided.

Program (CET) :

14h00-14h10 – Welcome, contextualization of the webinar, presentation of the webinar and speakers
Morgane Gaudin, MEDAE network Coordinator – CARI Association

14h10-14h20 – Introduction of the webinar : Role and place of women in agroecology in North Africa
Zoubir Chattou, Researcher at the Ecole Nationale d’Agriculture de Meknès (ENAM)

14h20-14h35 – TUNISIA : Neo-rural women settling in agroecology in oasis and peri-urban systems
Imene Chelbi, Farmer and founder of the El Rochen farm

14h35-14h55 – First question and answer session

14h55-15h10 – ALGERIA : Agroecology and emancipation of rural women in mountain agroecosystems
Karima Boudedja, Senior researcher at the Centre de Recherche en Economie Appliquée pour le Développement (CREAD)

15h10-15h25 – MOROCCO : Agroecology and emancipation of rural women in mountain agroecosystems
Ghizlane Echchgadda, Teacher-researcher at the Ecole Nationale d’Agriculture de Meknès (ENAM)

15h25-15h45 – Second question and answer session

15h45-15h55 – Closing remarks by the great witness
Rachel Bezner Kerr, Teacher at the Cornell University

16h00 – End of the webinar

The registration is mandatory, so sign up now here.

The second cross-visit, when the oasis becomes a laboratory : A knowledge-sharing meeting at the Laghouat Living Lab (Algeria)

From February 19 to 23, 2025, the Laghouat Living Lab hosted a cross-visit during which local and international experts shared their knowledge and experience in the face of contemporary climatic and economic challenges. For five days, participants explored together how to combine ancestral techniques and innovative approaches to build resilient and sustainable agricultural systems.

The second cross-visit of the NATAE project brought together around twenty experts from the Maghreb and Europe : farmers from the Laghouat and Tizi Ouzou LL (Algeria), actors from the Adrar Replication Laboratory (Mauritania) and Kébili RL (Tunisia), as well as researchers from CREAD, INAT (Tunisia) and WUR (Netherlands).

The El Argoub association organized a program structured around three major issues :

water management in the face of drought
processing and adding value to production
co-construction of knowledge

Field visits formed the backbone of these exchanges. In traditional gardens, participants analyzed the ancestral “water tower” system via the seguias. Local farmers shared their techniques for collectively managing this scarce resource, prompting enriching comparisons with practices in Tunisia and Mauritania. A visit to the Tadjmout underground inferoflux dam, which captures floodwater while preventing evaporation losses, sparked lively discussions between hydrogeologists, researchers and farmers on hydraulic infrastructures adapted to arid zones.

During the farms visits, each participant was able to question, compare and document integrated crop-livestock systems specific to the oasis context. Mauritanian farmers shared their practices for adapting to even more arid conditions, while Tunisians presented their innovations in energy-saving irrigation. These exchanges in the field helped to collectively identify the resilience factors of agricultural systems in the face of climatic changes.

Workshops were held to methodically dissect field observations. The first workshop, dedicated to water management, compared traditional techniques with modern technological approaches. Participants mapped all the solutions observed, assessing their transferability from one territory to another.

A second workshop focused on value chains, dissecting the transformation processes observed in several production units. Farmers presented their techniques for valorizing date by-products, cheese-making and bee-keeping, triggering detailed technical exchanges on processes, equipment, costs and marketing strategies. Short circuits and e-commerce were the subject of comparative analyses between the different regions represented. The workshop on the co-construction of knowledge deeply impressed the participants. The El Argoub association presented its organizational model, sparking a collective reflection on cooperative structures as levers for agricultural innovation.

These exchanges and debates helped to formalize learning, identify transferable practices and contribute to new expertise and knowledge. These moments of collective intelligence recommended to maintain the exchange network in order to create a cross-border community of agricultural innovation adapted to the climatic challenges of arid zones.

For the final day, the participants discovered the Saharan Atlas and Djebel Amour, revealing the thousand-year-old history of this region where human ingenuity has always been able to adapt to environmental constraints. The Ksar of Taouiala, with its terraced gardens and irrigation system, as well as the rock carving stations, including the famous “elephant protecting her baby elephant” at El Ghicha, bear witness to the temporal depth of the relationship between man and his environment in this region.

This week of professional immersion demonstrated that oasis agriculture, far from being a relic of the past, is a model for the future, where traditional knowledge and technical innovation combine to shape resilient and sustainable agricultural systems.

Skoura Living Lab Activities Updates

The ENAM team recently welcomed two master’s students from Wageningen University as part of the NATAE project. One of the students, Luigi Lugaresi, worked on the technical aspects and experimentation of associating fenugreek, an aromatic and medicinal plant, with olive trees in Skoura. The other student, Fay De Beer, focused on studying and conducting surveys with male and female farmers, both within and outside of cooperatives in the Skoura Living Lab. For her work, she needed to organize a focus group with the women of the Safirat Al Aachab cooperative, so Safa Aatig who is part of the ENAM team organized this session and participated as an animator, facilitator, and translator during the focus group. The aim was to gather insights from the women about their vision for the future development of the cooperative and the techniques they believe are necessary to make this vision a reality.

Held on March 1, 2025 in Skoura M’daz, the Safirat Al Aachab cooperative members in the focus group discussion shared their vision for the future. In 2035, the three participating members aimed to cultivate 100% of their raw materials, growth from the current 70% purchased externally. It also includes the expansion of the cultivation of medicinal and aromatic plants such as saffron, lavender and oregano, which they started in 2024 and 2025.

The members of the cooperative emphasized their willingness to maintain the cooperative’s small and close-knit structure and do not want to admit new members. They visualize cultivating approximately 10 hectares by 2035 with both owned and rented land and concentrating on sustainable practices like drip irrigation. Besides, they showed an interest in obtaining ONSSA certification that would help in applying for government grants as well as to improve their products. However, they continue to reaffirm their commitment to reinvesting all profits back into the cooperative and not taking personal income.

RIAM is hosting a webinar on the Systéme Participatif de Garantie (SPG)

History, Objectives, Tools, How It Works, Farmers’ Testimonies, Consumers’ Testimonies.

RIAM (the Network of Agroecological Initiatives in Morocco) is hosting a webinar on the Systéme Participatif de Garantie (SPG) under the NATAE project, funded by the European Union and led by CIHEAM IAMM. This initiative aims to connect agroecology and ecological transition stakeholders in Morocco.

Given Morocco and North Africa’s agricultural challenges due to climate change and food import dependency, agroecology presents a viable solution for sustainability and resilience.

Since 2018, RIAM has been developing the “Participatory Guarantee System” Label with support from institutional partners and civil society. Currently, about 60 farms in Rabat-Salé-Kénitra, Marrakech, and Casablanca are certified under this system, which promotes local quality assurance through active stakeholder participation, trust, networking, and knowledge exchange.

This webinar will guide farmers through the SPG Agroecology Morocco implementation process, fostering a participatory approach to drive an inclusive transition towards sustainable agricultural practices while ensuring economic viability.

PROGRAME

Presentation of the history of the SPG
Presentation of the objectives and tools
of the SPG
Testimonies from farmers and
consumers

13 FEBRUARY 2025

10:00 - 12:30 (CET)

Launch of cross-visits in Tunisia with the Siliana – El Krib living laboratory (INAT)

From January 25th to 28th, 20 farmers, researchers, and development actors from Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, France, and the Netherlands met in Tunisia for the first cross-visit organized as part of the NATAE project. The participants included laboratory representatives from Laghouat, Tizi Ouzou and Setif (Algeria), and Boulmane (Morocco), as well as researchers from WUR and IAMM.

With the support of INAT (National Agronomic Institute in Tunisia), participants were able to travel to the governorate of Siliana, El Krib delegation, in the north-west of the country, to meet stakeholders involved in the agroecological transition of their territory and discuss with them three major issues in this cereal-producing area: (i) soil fertility, (ii) integration of legumes into cereal systems, (iii) access to information and agricultural extension.

The program included farm visits, a tour of the INGC (National Institute of Field Crops) experimentation station, and restitution workshops. These days were rich in experience and knowledge sharing and highlighted relevant agroecological practices to improve food security and sovereignty in North African countries in the context of climate change.

(i) Discussions on soil fertility highlighted a real awareness on the part of all stakeholders on the importance of soils for crop yields and system sustainability and, therefore, on the need to preserve them from degradation and erosion. To achieve this, the Siliana – El Krib living laboratory has implemented several practices, such as no-till sowing in combination with crop rotation.
(ii) The issue of integrating legumes into cereal systems has enabled farmers from neighbouring countries to discover fodder associations and their benefits at different levels (yield, price, nutritional value, etc.). Legume/cereal rotation has also been recognized for its ability to improve soil fertility and crop yields while reducing the need for nitrogen fertilizers.
(iii) Agricultural extension was recognized by all as one of the main conditions for disseminating agroecological practices and encouraging their adoption by farmers. Agricultural extension can be based on various methods, such as the creation of pilot farms (like living laboratories) or peer-to-peer information sharing, as with the “Farmer Leaders” program developed by INGC over the past 5 years.

This visit was the first of the 4 cross-visits scheduled for 2025, which aim to encourage exchanges between living laboratories and replication laboratories set up in the project’s intervention countries so that farmers, researchers and development actors can draw inspiration from the agroecological actions and practices developed there, and share their own experience. These visits are also an opportunity to create new synergies between stakeholders involved in the agroecological transition in North Africa. The next step in Algeria from February 20^th to 23^rd is to meet the actors of the Laghouat living laboratory, located in an oasis farming system.

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS – International Field School

Call for Applications - International Fied School

The National Agronomic Institute of Tunisia (INAT) invites agronomy, rural economics, and sociology students to a hands-on field school in Kebili, Tunisia, as part of the NATAE project. Open to final-year engineering and Master’s students from NATAE member countries, this is a unique opportunity to engage with agroecology and industry experts. (https://www.iamm.ciheam.org/fr/project/natae/).

Objectives of the field school

Supervised by INAT researchers, NATAE partners, and local socio-economic actors, this field school aims to conduct a territorial diagnosis of the Kebili oases. Participants will analyze local agricultural, economic, and social dynamics, focusing on sustainable development and agroecological transition.

Through surveys, stakeholder exchanges, and spatial analysis, students will gain hands-on field experience, contribute to understanding oasis ecosystems, and propose action plans for a successful agroecological transition.

Practical details:

When: April 12 to April 19, 2025
Where: Kebili
What is covered: Local Transport in Tunisia, accommodation and meals related to participation in
the school.
What is not covered: International transport, personal expenses.

Eligibility criteria:

• Be a student in the final year of the engineering cycle or in a master’s degree from one of the
member countries of the NATAE project (https://www.iamm.ciheam.org/fr/project/natae/).
• Have a strong interest in themes related to agroecology and sustainable development.
• Fluency in French.

How to apply

Interested candidates must submit:
• An up-to-date CV
• A cover letter explaining your interest in the field school and your career aspirations.
• Commitment to participate in the entire field school.

Application Deadline
Applications must be sent no later than February 15, 2025 by email to the following address:
saoussen.ayadi@inat.ucar.tn
Applications that are incomplete or received after this date will not be considered.

Selection
Successful applicants will be contacted by email by March 10, 2025.
For more information, contact us at: saoussen.ayadi@inat.ucar.tn
We look forward to your applications!

NATAE Field Kick-Off Day at El Krib Living Lab Marks a Milestone for Agroecology in Tunisia

The Living Lab of El Krib in the Siliana district, Tunisia, marked the start of the 2024-25 cropping season with a Field Kick-Off Day on October 24, 2024 under the NATAE project. Supported by the CGIAR Research Initiative on Agroecology and hosted by ICARDA in collaboration with INGC, INAT, and local stakeholders, the event brought together 54 participants, including farmers, researchers, extension agents, and NGOs with a remarkable 50% female participation.

The initiative aligns with NATAE’s broader goals to scale up agroecological practices across North Africa through its seven Living Labs located in five countries (Algeria, Egypt, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia), addressing multi-aspect challenges at the economic, environmental, social, and policy levels. A key objective of this event was gathering farmers’ feedback on the co-designed agroecological practices that were identified at the El Krib Living Lab site, and therefore to help further refine these practices and guide the Living Lab’s research roadmap in the following phases of the project.

The four agroecological practices were co-designed under the NATAE project mainly in response to the challenges faced in the El Krib Living Lab such as poor soils, irregular rainfall, and soil erosion, given the semi-arid climate, and the vulnerability of the local agricultural system which revolves around cereal-livestock farming.

No-tillage + Crop Rotation (Cereals/Legumes)
Intercropping (Forage Mixtures) + Livestock Integration
Forage Mixtures + Livestock + Reduced Chemical Inputs
No-Tillage + Crop Rotation + Livestock

The Field Kick-Off Day was an interactive experience, emphasizing co-creation and knowledge exchange between the different attendees. Farmers engaged in discussions, provided feedback on proposed practices, and witnessed a rainfall simulation showcasing the benefits of no-till farming for water retention and soil conservation.

Webinar Medae: What are the prospects for supporting the deployment of agroecology in public policies in North Africa?

MEDAE will implement a webinar that will present the results of a cross-sectional analysis of public policies in North Africa, as well as an examination of the place of agroecology in international conventions, and will look at the extent to which these policies provide a favourable or unfavourable framework for the agroecological transition. There will be time for discussion on the prospects for supporting agroecology and ways of encouraging the agroecological transition in North Africa.

Program (CET)

• 14:00 – Welcome
• 14:05 – Presentation of the MEDAE network (MEDiterranean multiactor network on AgroEcology).
Marion Comptour, MEDAE Network Coordinator – CARI Association

• 14:20 – Discussion
• 14:30 – Agroecology in the national public policies of North African countries.
Rita Jalkh, post-doctoral fellow and project manager NATAE– CIHEAM IAMM

• 15:00 – The place of agroecology in farmer practices: the case of Algeria.
Adel Moulai, researcher and project coordinator – El-Argoub Association

• 15:20 – International conventions as possible levers for a better integration of agroecology into national public policies.
Manon Albagnac, in charge of the follow-up to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification – Association CARI

• 15:35 – Discussion
• 16:00 – End of webinar

The registration is mandatory, so sign up now here

More information to come on https://www.medae-agroecology.eu

Workshop: Deployment of Living Labs Approaches in Africa for Sustainable Agriculture

presentation board with notes and planning

Workshop aims and objectives

Following-up on the webinar ‘Agroecology Living Labs in Africa’, during which the four projects under the Horizon Europe Farm to Fork program PrAEctiCE, CANALLS, CIRAWA and NATAE shared their perspectives on the development of Living Labs throughout Africa, an offline workshop was co-organized during the Open Living Lab Days 2024 in Timișoara, Romania. The 1.5 h event brought together in a roundtable discussion participants who were either involved in a Living Lab setting (GDA SIDI Amor, Tunisia or Basaksehir Living-Lab, Turkey) or interested in the Living Lab approach (Digital4Planet) and particular within agricultural research and extension (Acta, France)

The aim of this workshop was to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and experiences among established and upcoming food systems Living Labs throughout Africa and to delve into the opportunities and challenges that arise when international projects set up and operate Living Labs in Africa.

Roundtable discussion and take-home-messages

The roundtable discussion centered around following questions:

How do we bring together the research and innovation needs of local communities and (international) scientists?
How can data be collected from Living Labs scientifically by making it easy and simple for living lab practitioners?
How do we address differences in understanding, communication, working styles, language, and cultural backgrounds?
How can we foster long-term ownership of the Living Lab in an agroecosystem with limited finance?

Following points were emphasized throughout the discussion and seem crucial for a successful Living Lab approach:

Need analysis: starting a Living Lab with identifying and analyzing the local challenges, needs and goals of involved Living Lab actors so as to initiate and conduct relevant research and action
Embeddedness and trust: Living Labs depend on the sustained participation of involved actors. Thus, building personal connections, trust and good working relationships by research and action teams embedded in the local context is deemed crucial.
Training the local facilitators/researchers etc.: Having the above point in mind, it is therefore, necessary for international projects to invest time and resources in empowering local researchers and facilitators, so as to sustain the work of Living Labs even after the end of externally funded projects.
Demonstrating benefits, best practices, empower pioneers: To motivate participation in the Living Labs and to create value for the participants it was emphasized that feeding back the results is important through demonstrating best practices and the work of pioneers.
Cross visits – peer-to-peer/ south-south collaboration: The importance of peer-to-peer and horizontal exchanges were also highlighted when it comes to learning and Living Lab sustainability beyond the timeline of externally funded projects.

Short info on the sister projects

PrAEctiCe aims to facilitate the agroecological transition of farmers in East Africa by providing them with a novel Decision Support Tool (DST) that features an agroecology indicator set. The DST is designed to empower farmers to make informed decisions that can enhance their agroecological practices. To validate the effectiveness of this tool, PrAEctiCe has established three demonstration pilots (living labs) in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. The data generated from these pilots will be used to validate the DST.

CIRAWA using four key agroecological approaches, the project aims to demonstrate in how working with nature can enhance ecosystem health and biodiversity while improving local livelihoods and climate resilience.

CANALLS aims to drive agroecological transitions in the humid tropics of Central and Eastern Africa via multi-actor transdisciplinary Agroecology Living Labs (ALLs) and provide holistic agroecological solutions that meet the challenges of local food systems.

NATAE employs a transdisciplinary Living Lab approach to identify, test and scale tailored agroecological practice combinations with local stakeholders in six Living Labs reflecting the diversity of agroecological zones in North Africa. Farmers and farm-scale agroecological practices are the starting point of NATAE Living Labs, which operate at the community level to enable dialogues and activities between key stakeholders necessary for an agroecological transition

Figure 1: Picture of the A0 poster. The discussion outcomes were structured using an A0 poster with a matrix representing the key activities for stakeholder engagement (inform, consult, involve, and collaborate) as rows and the key phases of a Living Lab lifecycle (planning/design, implementation, and evaluation) as columns. Participants noted down important elements, solutions and examples of activities that can be developed at each stage based on their experience

Developing promising agroecological practice combinations in the semi-arid and mountainous Living Lab of Skoura M’Daz, Boulemane, Morocco (Skoura-MA)

landscape of a village, with mountains in the background

Rich insights into the potentials and challenges of an agroecological transition in the Living Lab Skoura-MA have been gained during an extensive territorial diagnosis and the official Living Lab launch activities in 2023. Learning from that, researchers proposed an initial set of agroecological practices (AEP) to be explored in the Living Lab and to be discussed with farmers in more detail: the 1) association of olive trees and medicinal and aromatic plants (MAP), 2) traditional gravity irrigation and improvement options, 3) drip irrigation, 4) use of manure, and 5) use of shredded tree pruning residues.

Three farmer focus group discussions took place in February 2024 bringing together eight women of the local women cooperative processing MAP, four and six farmers respectively. Farmers exchanged on the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed AEPs and were subsequently asked to rate those AEP in an individual rating activity. The idea is, that suitable AEP combinations can increase positive and minimize negative effects of single practices in a synergistic way.

*`Figure 1: One focus group discussion was held with the local women cooperative processing MAP in their workshop`*

Concerns emphasized by farmers were among others the effect of practices on water use, crop development and yields, soil fertility and erosion, pest and disease development, as well as implementation constraints regarding equipment (e.g, wood shredders, processing equipment for MAP) and infrastructure (e.g., water storage basins) requirements.

*`Figure 2: A flip chart with two columns was used to summarize the discussion on advantages and disadvantages of agroecological practices`*

Farmers’ concerns were taken up by the representative board on the 20^th of February 2024 gathering 9 stakeholders including farmers and cooperative members, representatives of regional and provincial agricultural governance institutions, elected municipality officials, and researchers of the National School of Agriculture in Meknes. Representative board members explored promising activities at Living Lab level that could help to address farmers’ concerns, such as training and farmer organization.

Next steps in the Living Lab aim to set up initial on-farm experimentation plots to explore the effects of promising AEP combinations and to organize farmer field schools facilitating the knowledge exchange among farmers and researchers.